Microsoft Free AV Beta Available June 23

This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use.

Microsoft is not successful in every software market they enter. Anti-malware is a market they have never seriously competed in and last November they withdrew, for a second time, from the consumer AV space.

But the more important part of that withdrawal announcement was that they would return, this time with a free product, at the time code-named Morro. The official name for that product is Microsoft Security Essentials and the public beta test version of it will be available for download from Microsoft starting June 23 at about 9am PDT from http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials. Generally availability is scheduled for later this calendar year.

Our Neil Rubenking has tested the beta and calls it basically good, not great. It has average malware removal, the download of the signatures took a long time and it took up more disk space that he liked, but there was a lot that he did like about it.

There was a time when a move like this would have brought protesters out and lawyers filing briefs in Federal court, but times have changed. True, since the Security Essentials announcement I have received some contact from other anti-malware vendors, mostly arguing that Microsoft's offering is second- or third-rate and not innovative, and this may be true. I think it may actually be intentional

Microsoft's motivations for releasing a free anti-malware product are different from AVG's or Panda's or Avira's. Those companies really want a foot in the door to get you to upgrade and also to use their free product for visibility. Microsoft isn't trying to sell anything here except Windows. Their free anti-malware is meant to protect the Windows "ecosystem," to reduce the number of unprotected systems out there. The point is for people not to have an excuse not to be protected.

Already they have no such excuse. There are numerous free products and let's do them the favor of assuming they are at least as good at their jobs as Microsoft's. And yet lots of people who need protection run without it. Free AV from a company with the visibility of Microsoft could have a positive impact on malware protection at the macro level. Time will tell, but I have to figure this is a good thing for us all.